Curt

Yeah, it’s fine to hope there is more. But they got him for 1 year of Johansson. Maybe Staal gets a lot worse, but maybe not. It’s a short term solution, but it’s a reasonable, possible solution This morning the 2020-21 Sabres had no viable 2C option. This evening they do. The cost was minimal. Net win.

Neither would Cirelli, Monahan, Danault or any other good 2C addition. In the NHL, almost no single move is a game changer. There needs to be more, but this is a good start.

Dude! He is 36 but he is good. Consistently 2C level good over the past few years. His contract is one year at 3.5M. He was acquired for Johansson, one year at 4.5M. He is better than Johansson and cheaper. Regardless of if Buffalo acquires a better/younger C this offseason, this trade looks like a big fat W for the Sabres. Can you take no joy in a good thing?

To the pedant thread with you!

Staal will probably be the 3rd best C to play for Buffalo in the past 13 years. Crazy.

Oh damn! There is a legit 2C stop gap. Looks like something that someone here might actually propose. Awesome first move! Adams coming out strong. I don’t get why Minny did this one for one with no retained salary or picks involved.

Over the past 2 seasons, ES scoring from Mitts and Sheary. Mitts- 22 pts in 108 games, 17 per 82 Sheary- 44 pts in 133 games, 27 per 82 Mitrs was consistently bad and often awful. Sheary was generally ok, sometimes bad and occasionally awful. Mitts did not outplay Sheary for any significant period of time. Mitts was not an NHL caliber player.

Is Tuch really truculent? Is he actually a physical, gritty, grinding, intimidating player? Or is he just tall? Honest question. I don’t see Vegas play much, past my bedtime. He delivers about 1 hit per game, but so does Tage Thompson, and his PIMs don’t paint the picture of an intimidating player. Guess how many he had this season........8. Guess how many last season.........8 again. Leaves me skeptical.

Seems like 12-20 range is more likely for him.

My interpretation of these answers. -No, not exceptional, but good. Probably a little above average. -“Where do you see the talent dropping off?” is a really bad question that everyone will interpret differently. The correct answer is obviously after #1 overall.

How about when beating a dead horse? Seems to be more relevant around these parts. 😁

Seems like he was clever enough to politic his way into the GM role. Maybe he is clever enough to be a savvy GM. Cream (or oil! Lol) rises to the top. Here’s hoping!

I’ll argue that a 2020-21 Sabres playoff team could be iced with a cap hit in the low 70’s. It certainly does make it more difficult though. It’s a handcuff rather than an assurance of failure.

Just tell the Pegulas that it’s going to take 3 years to implement the new organizational philosophy and get this thing turned around. That seems to have worked in the past.

Yeah man, it’s been bad. I challenge anyone to disagree! Lol

Two years after. Not that quickly. They were in win now mode during those years.

Yeah, they probably didn’t weight the crappy performance enough. It probably was enough to warrant a firing. I’m not actually arguing against that. They publicly said they were going to keep him on. I was just saying that these things don’t happen in a complete vacuum. I suspect that if Botterill was achieving great success, the Pegulas would have been more willing to compromise with him, or more likely would not have been reviewing the organization and subsequently asking him to make many changes in the first place. In the end, the two are connected, because if the team was successful, they would probably be making more money too.

I’m not making that up. They did perform an internal audit of which Adams was a part. This is known, innit? I agree with you that they would have kept Botterill if he had instituted the changes that they wanted. That’s pretty clear. I also agree that Botterill wasn’t doing a good enough job.

When firing an employee, it’s rarely just one thing. Would Botterill have still been fired if the Sabres had just won back to back Cups? Or more realistically back to back deep playoff runs? Somehow I doubt it. They probably would have come to some agreement. From my perspective, it was the very fact that what Botterill was doing obviously was not working which prompted, first an internal audit (performed by Adams no less) and then an ultimatum for changes. If Botterill had been successful, I doubt they would have asked him to make the changes that they did.

They would need to trade out salary, but that’s doable. They aren’t hampered by excessive NTC’s, like TB for example.

Montreal hasn't spent to the cap for the past several seasons. I doubt they will start now.

That guy may have been right though. Depending on if the Penguins are willing to take on a salary like that. Im not sure what an internal cap looks like or what the FA agent market is going to look like. Someone like Borowiecki could be signing for $950,000 instead of $1.6M. All of my RFA #s could be $500K to $1M too high. I’m really not sure, but the impact is probably going to be more than we expect. Values of draft picks and ELC players is going to be inflated, values of guys due salary deflated. We may all need to recalibrate our TradeValue-O-Meters.

I did one of those Capfriendly GM’s. Made a few, what I consider to be, reasonable trades and signings. Nothing earth shattering, but just enough to shore up the middle 6. Feel free to tear it to shreds. 😁 https://www.capfriendly.com/armchair-gm/team/1917678

True. Hopefully it doesn’t come to that. I doubt he would be able to get anything too high in arbitration though.

I agree. I think everyone does.